Stopping the hate is harder than an apology decades later

Harder than saying sorry for the wrongs committed long ago is to recognise and stop new harms being inflicted today.

As the NSW Parliament delivered its historic apology to the original 1978 Mardi Gras marchers, who were bashed by police as young men and women, the message came through again and again – look at what is happening now.

Safe Schools hasn't been going long enough for a study which examines the impact of policies, strategies and actions on any group of people.

The ostracising language that causes so much pain to gay and lesbian teenagers and school children has recently exploded into the limelight – from the mouths of politicians.

On the same day as the NSW apology, in Federal Parliament, Liberal MP George Christensen compared the Safe Schools anti-bullying program to "grooming" for paedophiles.

A day later, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull belatedly urged federal MPs to consider the impact of their words on children and their families.

Grey now, the 78ers sat in the NSW Parliament's public gallery remembering the horror of that night 38 years ago. Times had changed so much, partly because of their bravery, that NSW now had the gayest parliament in Australia, it was said.

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By this it was meant that politicians can openly identify as gay or lesbian. Yet the NSW Parliament was unable to pass legislation allowing same sex marriage, even before the High Court ruled it was a Commonwealth matter.

Labor MP John Robertson, whose son is gay, said it was disturbing that the Safe Schools program, which makes students understand that yelling a jibe makes other people feel unsafe, was now under investigation by the federal government.

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This was the same "ignorance and bigotry that led to the behaviour we saw in 1978".

Coogee Liberal MP Bruce Notley-Smith, who read the formal apology, went on to describe his feelings as a 14-year-old in 1978, who realised he was gay, as the television news readers portrayed the arrested protesters as "sick and perverse". "The term homosexual seemed to be sinister," he recalled.

MPs recalled their own school years, and fellow students who were exiled from family, or committed suicide, because they were gay or lesbian.

Other speakers saw the parallel between the 78ers ordeal and the Gayby Baby controversy, where an entire school, Burwood Girls, was shamed on the front page of a newspaper last year. The Baird Government, in response, had effectively banned the screening in schools of a film that sought to teach acceptance.

Labor MP Jodi McKay, who helped to introduce the Safe Schools program to NSW before entering parliament, said "terrible actions" had occurred this week in federal parliament.

But she saw hope, and consistency with the 78ers apology, in the latest response of the NSW government.

When questioned about Safe Schools, Premier Mike Baird distanced NSW from the review ordered by Turnbull.

Baird told parliament on Wednesday: "We have welcomed that program across our schools. Importantly, we have said that our local schools have the capacity to look at whatever programs or partnerships they want to have, particularly those about anti-bullying and inclusion."

McKay said: "When we have that sort of leadership and tripartisan support in this place it makes the battles ahead of us all the more achievable."